Life on Lockdown: See-Through Gadgets, DIY Media, No Internet

Imagine that every day you wake up in an airport security line. Now imagine that the security check is taking place on the airplane itself, in coach, on a very full flight. The overhead bins are full, so just below the seat pocket in front of you, the soles of your feet are pressed against your carry-on bag and one personal item.

Your knees are bent as though you were about to spring from a high-dive. TSA employees work their way down the aisle, opening bags and swapping passengers’ shoes. You fidget in your seat, bumping your neighbor with every movement. His breath and body odor float over you –- aerosolized humanity wafting into a cabin full of sweaty smells.

It’s time for a distraction. The TV works, but the Feds have banned MP3 players on airplanes. Luckily, you came prepared with a DiscMan and Case Logic folder full of CDs. See, there was a reason why you never threw them away.

In California’s San Quentin State Prison, inmates spend most of their day on board this metaphorical 747. Their two-man cells are tiny, their personal belongings may take up just 6 cubic feet of space –- the equivalent of shoving your life’s possessions into four carry-on bags. Though they spend years waiting for takeoff, they are permitted to use approved electronic devices in the meantime.

As Lil’ Wayne recently learned, some electronic devices are definitely not approved. In his case, having unauthorized earphones and iPod in his cell landed him in trouble with the authorities at Riker’s Island, where he is serving a short stint for a weapons charge.

Read on to see the technology that does get the green light from the warden.

The California Department of Corrections allows inmates to have many different electronic entertainment gizmos, from TVs to radios to CD players, but every one must be ready for a close inspection at any time. The inspections are designed to ensure that inmates don’t open electronic devices and stash contraband, but also to prevent them from removing components that can be fashioned into weapons.

The inspection is so thorough, in fact, that the prisons only allow devices that have been repackaged in clear plastic cases to prevent stashing contraband within. There is a whole industry of consumer products made specifically for prisons, supplying unsharpenable toothbrushes along with cosmetic gels in transparent tubes.

Despite these precautions, inmates continue to make improvised weapons out of the most innocuous materials, including wetting newspaper and forming it into a lethal spear. Hard to believe, perhaps, but in 1985 a San Quentin inmate fatally stabbed a corrections officer with papier-mâché shiv.

Though CSI and other media portrayals often show immaculate, high-tech prisons, the reality is often much different. Cells at San Quentin can be cluttered with clothes, bedding, and personal property.

Top photo: A clear plastic clip-on fan is attached to the inside of a cell door. Lt. Samuel Robinson, the public information officer at San Quentin, asks Ernest, one of the cell’s occupants, “Could you find a picture of a girl with a bigger booty?”

Bottom photo: Extension cords snake around a cell, supplying power to the TV, a fan and other devices.

Electronics with clear casings are a fairly new phenomenon at California correctional institutions. They were introduced at San Quentin within the last decade, says Lt. Samuel Robinson, the prison’s public information officer.

The requirement is particularly valuable when it comes to inspecting televisions, which are easily damaged by X-rays and must be inspected manually. At present, inmates are allowed to keep electronics with standard black exteriors if they were purchased before the new transparent-housing rules went into effect.

TVs with standard nontransparent cases must be routinely disassembled, inspected, and put back together. Correctional officers place wax seals on each of the device’s exterior screws and regularly check to see if the seals are still intact. The system isn’t perfect, and inmates have found ways of breaking the seals and reapplying them.

Top photo: A CRT television hovers in an inmate’s cell. Flatscreens are also permitted.

Bottom photo:A pile of TVs sits in the inspection area at San Quentin.

MP3 players are non grata in many in many correctional facilities, but prisoners can use approved CD players. They can buy both commercial albums and mix CDs composed of individual tracks they select.

Inmate supplier Access SecurePack offers 4 million albums at prices that commonly range between $13 and $20, or 10 selected songs on a burned disc for $20. The company’s landing page for its California-specific catalogs prominently features the announcement that its music store now sells albums that carry the “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” label.

There are no bargains in San Quentin, at least if you are spending money earned from prison labor, which pays between 30 and 90 cents per hour.

Most of the work takes place in a sprawling, modern furniture factory located on the premises. It is staffed by prisoners who crank out office furniture as well as the mattresses used for dorm rooms on the campuses California’s public universities. They also produced the conference table used by Arnold Schwarzenegger at the governor’s office in Sacramento.

Top photo: Ernest Morgan, an inmate since 1987, holds his prison-approved CD player.

Bottom photo: An alarm blares, signaling that a problem is taking place somewhere within the prison walls. Morgan, like all inmates, is required to take a knee until the sounds stops.

The vast majority of San Quentin inmates have no access to computers, internet-enabled or otherwise. The result is the prison, and institutions like it, are among the last bastions of the manual typewriter. Some of the prison’s longest-serving inmates, including residents of death row, have spent decades clacking out appeals and complaints against officers and living conditions on these forgotten keyboards.

Paul V. Willis, pictured above, describes himself as a former Black Panther serving a sentence for something he didn’t do, though, as far as Panther politics are concerned, he was “involved in everything you ever read about.”

He uses his typewriter to draft complaints against correctional officers, and to pursue an appeal based on new information that he claims to have uncovered regarding improprieties on the part of the district attorney involved with his case.

Above: Paul V. Willis has been in prison since 1965, serving an 85-year sentence.

Swintec, a New Jersey-based maker of office machines, sells a line of clear-plastic typewriters designed specifically for correctional institutions, available in 43 states as well as federal prisons and military brigs.

According to Ed Michael, sales manager at Swintec, many prisons ban access to computers even if they are not connected to the net, fearing that technically adept prisoners will stay a step ahead of their guards by stashing digital documents that help them run businesses or nefarious operations. Swintec does make word processors with small amounts of memory, but Michaels emphasizes that the storage systems are designed so that they are easy to inspect.

The company offers a variety of models to comply with the different rules at the prisons it serves. Some have memory capacities as low as 4 Kb. That’s enough to run an LCD display that allows users to check their last few lines of type before the keys actually hit the paper, making it possible to backspace and delete.

That’s particularly important, because whiteout is not allowed in San Quentin. The prison’s public information officer, Lt. Samuel Robinson, explains that this surprising rule is a response to the fact that inmates could use liquid paper to alter important paperwork issued by the prison.

Top photo: A corrections officer carries an inmate’s clear-plastic typewriter from San Quentin’s death row.

In the midst of all this throwback technology, there is an oasis of modern media in the aging big house. A state-of-the-art computer lab, stocked with late model Macs and other computers, allows inmates to shoot documentaries as well as TV programs shown on the prison’s closed-circuit cable system.

None of the computers have internet access, but the prisoners’ work is a bridge to people outside of the prison, on DVD and San Quentin’s YouTube channel.

Repentance, a documentary by Troy Williams, chronicles how inmates can change themselves for the better during incarceration. His goal is to offer a path away from nihilism and anger, the “negativity” that he sees as the root cause of many people’s crimes. “If I see change,” he says, “I can be changed.”

In addition to working in audio and video, inmates at San Quentin have the option of working on the prison’s newspaper, which boasts well-written articles and a professional layout. Overall, however, the opportunities for California inmates to develop skills and pursue their educations have dwindled, suffering from cutbacks, as legislators attempt to tackle California’s ongoing budget crisis.

Several inmates involved in San Quentin’s media projects are musicians, including Blue (pictured above), who says that he once played with the San Francisco psychedelic-rock band Blue Cheer. The group is known in part for its cover of the blues song “Parchman Farm,” about a Mississippi state penitentiary where Son House and other blues musicians served time with hard labor. It is not clear whether Blue was the inspiration for the cover.

In addition to being a creative outlet for inmates, the music that inmates like Blue write and record can serve as soundtracks for video projects made by fellow prisoners, without raising copyright issues.

Above: Blue lays down guitar tracks in Garage Band inside San Quentin.